Even before modern Jewish nationalism, known now as Zionism,
began to be formulated at the end of the nineteenth century, the
longings for a "return to Zion" were occasionally given
practical outlets, sometimes aided by Christians who saw an
ingathering of the Jewish exiles as a necessary precondition to
the Biblical "end days," the preordained series of
events that would lead to the "second coming". Much
Jewish settlement activity centred around modernizing local
agricultural practices in Palestine. The British Society for the
Promotion of Jewish Agricultural Labour in the Holy Land, for
example, was headed in the 1850s by the British Consul to
Jerusalem and his wife, and was marginally successful in
establishing land reclamation on a small scale, including an
irrigation project and "Abraham's Vineyard." The Consul
also submitted a detailed scheme to the British Foreign Secretary
"to persuade Jews in a large body to settle here as
agriculturalists on the soil .. . in partnership with the Arab
peasantry" (Tuchman 1956, 219). "As the word 'persuade'
indicates," Barbara Tuchman points out, "the time was
still not ripe."

However, by the latter half of the nineteenth century, Jewish
immigration to Palestine was beginning in earnest. Land was
purchased for farms, colonies, and settlements centring around
the towns of Safed and Jaffa, and in the Judaean Hills and
Galilee. Financing for these endeavours came initially from such
wealthy diaspora families as the

Montefiores and Rothschilds. Eventually, however, sufficient
people were involved, both in funding and in immigration, for
organizations such as Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) and, later,
the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish National Fund, to
be established to streamline fundraising and to give political
structure to the movement (Sacher 1916, 138-142).

In the twentieth century, as the developing nationalisms of
both Arabs and Jews become more clearly defined, and with
subsequent population pressures accelerated by immigration, water
has continued to be a critical strategic resource.

When, after the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, the
idea of creating a Jewish State in Palestine (which by then had
been under Ottoman rule for 400 years) began to crystallize in
the plans of European Jewry, Theodore Herzl, considered to be the
father of modern Zionism, travelled to the region to assess the
practical possibilities. In Jerusalem, Herzl met the German
Kaiser, whose influence with the Ottoman Sultan he sought to
enlist. Barbara Tuchman describes the meeting in 1896 outside the
Mikveh Israel colony:

The Kaiser rode up, guarded by Turkish outriders, reined in
his horse, shook hands with Herzl to the awe of the crowd,
remarked on the heat, pronounced Palestine a land with a future,
"but it needs water, plenty of water," shook hands
again, and rode off. (Tuchman 1956, 291)

Frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Turks
for Jewish settlement, Herzl turned to the British, whose control
of Egypt extended into the northern Sinai Peninsula. In 1902,
Herzl suggested to Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial
Secretary, that Jewish colonization and massive irrigation of the
territory around El-Arish, in the northern Sinai Peninsula, would
create a "buffer state" between Egypt and Turkey,
helping to protect British interests in the Suez Canal (Ra'anan
1955, 36-37). Although Chamberlain was supportive, Lord Cromer,
head of the Anglo-Egyptian Administration in Cairo, was sceptical
of the chances for success of Jewish colonization and wary of
intimidating the Turks, with whom the legal boundaries in the
area were unclear. Cromer finally vetoed the project in 1903,
claiming that Nile water, which would be necessary for
irrigation, could not be spared.

Even without commitments for independent nations, both Jewish
and Arab populations began to swell in turn-of-the-century
Palestine, the former in waves of immigration from Yemen as well
as from Europe, and the latter attracted to new regional'
prosperity from other parts of the Arab world (Sachar 1969;
McCarthy 1990). According to Justin McCarthy (1990), Palestine
contained 340,000 people in 1878 and 722,000 by 1915 (see
appendix I, maps 7 and 8).

During World War I, as it became clear that the Ottoman Empire
was crumbling, the heirs apparent began to jockey for positions
of favour with the inhabitants of the region. The French had
inroads with the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon and therefore
focused on the northern territories of Lebanon and Syria. The
British, meanwhile, began to seek coalition with the Arabs from
Palestine and Arabia - whose military assistance against the
Turks they desired - and with the Jews of Palestine, both for
military assistance and for the political support of diaspora
Jewry (Ra'anan 1955).

As the course of the war became clear, French and British,
Arabs and Jews, all began to refine their territorial interests;
the location of the region's scarce water resources was a
critical factor in the decision-making process of each party.

A detailed description of the lengthy process that ultimately
led to the final determination of boundaries for the French and
British mandates, which, in turn, informed the borders of modern
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel, is beyond the scope of this
work, but can be found in the works of Ra'anan (1955), Sachar
(1969; 1979; 1987b), Hof (1985), and Fromkin (1989). However,
since the roots of subsequent water conflicts lie in the
delineation of modern borders, it is important to examine in some
detail the process and results, as well as the motives of each of
the actors involved. The following outline of events leading up
to the Anglo-French Convention in 1923 emphasizes only certain
decisions, and is based on the works mentioned above. The
interested reader is referred to that literature for more detail
(see maps 9 -12).

1913. French and Lebanese discussed the creation of a
"Greater Lebanon" under French control, which would
include the Beka'a Valley and the vilayet of Beirut, and which
included northern Palestine (Ra'anan 1955, 72).

22 March 1915. T.E. Lawrence wrote to London from
Cairo suggesting that he "pull them [the Arab tribes] all
together and roll up Syria by way of the Hejaz in the name of the
Sharif [Hussein] ... and biff the French out of all hope of
Syria" (Ra'anan 1955, 64).

May 1915. The "Damascus Protocol" was
drafted in Syria by secret Arab nationalist organizations
insisting on independence for the Hejaz, Iraq, Syria, and
Palestine, in exchange for assisting the British. In July, Emir
Hussein of the Hejaz communicated these demands to the British
High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon. In October,
McMahon finally agreed, but insisted that certain areas had to be
excluded because of British or French interests, namely "the
country west of Aleppo, Hams, Hama and Damascus," leaving
unclear what the status of Palestine was to be (Ra'anan 1955,
65).

9 March 1916. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed
between the British and the French, dividing the Middle East into
regions that would be designated as French (including Lebanon and
the northern Galilee), Frenchinfluence (Syria), British (Egypt,
Iraq, and the port of Haifa/Acre), Britishinfluence (northern
Saudi Arabia and Jordan), and international (the remainder of
Palestine) (Ra'anan 1955, 68).

The spheres of influence of the Sykes-Picot Agreement would
have left the watersheds in the region divided in a particularly
convoluted manner: the Litani and the Jordan headwaters to just
south of the Huleh region would be French; the Sea of Galilee
would be divided between international and French zones; the
Yarmuk Valley would be split between British and French; and the
lower stem of the Jordan would be international on the west bank
and British on the east.

Because of these divisions, and because there is no mention of
water per se in the literature on these negotiations, I suggest
that other factors, such as the locations of rail and oil lines,
holy places, and political debts and alliances, took precedence
and that water resources was not an issue to this point in the
border demarcation process (see Ra'anan 1955 and Fromkin 1989 for
thorough discussions of these other factors). After the
Sykes-Picot Agreement, however, and as the outcome of the war
began to become clear, each entity with national claims in the
region increasingly included water resources in its geographic
reasoning, particularly after the end of World War I in 1918.

7 February 1917. Disturbed by rumours of the
still-secret Franco-British agreement, Zionist leaders met Sir
Mark Sykes to express opposition to condominium or
internationalization of Palestine in favour of a British
Protectorate; they also insisted on full rights of Jewish
immigration and that Jews in Palestine be recognized as a nation
(Memorandum of Meeting, in Sachar 1987b, vol. 8).

2 November 1917. The Balfour Declaration was approved
by the British Cabinet:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use
their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this
object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political
status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. (Reproduced in
Sachar 1987b, vol. 8)

Conflicting interpretations of what was meant by
"national home," or even by "Palestine" (at
the time including both sides of the Jordan River), and the
apparent contradiction between "facilitating this
object" and "not prejudicing the ... rights of existing
non-Jewish communities," would lead to contention for years
to come.

September-December, 1918. Because of British
conquests in Palestine, the British no longer felt overly
obligated to the French and new political interests began to be
incorporated in the delineation of borders. Although they did not
accede totally to Zionist requests, the British did deviate from
the Sykes-Picot line and adopted the biblical "Dan to
Beersheba" for Palestine, as based on a map of
"Palestine under David and Solomon" (Hof 1985,11), in
negotiations with the French over the temporary boundaries of
"Occupied Enemy Territorial Administrations (OETA),"
but held open the possibility that

Whatever the administrative sub-divisions, we must recover for
Palestine, be it Hebrew or Arab, the boundaries up to the Litani
on the coast, and across to Banias, the old Dan, or Huleh in the
interior. (Lord Curzon, cited in Ingrams 1972, 49)

French Premier Georges Clemenceau agreed that Palestine,
defined at the time in the temporary borders of OETA, should be
exclusively British (Hof 1985, 7) (see appendix I, map 10).

1919. With the war over, and as preparations for the
Paris peace talks began at Versailles in early 1919, border
requirements were again refined by each side, as follows.

Zionist position

The Zionists began to formulate their desired boundaries for
the "national home," to be determined by three criteria
- historic, strategic, and economic considerations (Zionist
publications cited in Ra'anan 1955, 86).

Historic concerns coincided roughly with British allusions to
the biblical "Dan to Beersheba." These were considered
to be minimum requirements, which had to be supplemented with
territory that would allow military and economic security.
Military security required desert areas to the south and east as
well as the Beka'a Valley, a gateway in the north between the
Lebanon Mountains and Mount Hermon.

Economic security was defined by water resources. The entire
Zionist programme of immigration and settlement required water
for large-scale irrigation and, in a land with no fossil fuels,
for hydropower. The plans were "completely dependent"
on the acquisition of "the headwaters of the Jordan, the
Litani River, the snows of Hermon, the Yarmuk and its
tributaries, and the Jabbok" (Ra'anan 1955, 87).

In a flurry of communication between world Zionist leaders,
the aspects of historic, strategic, and economic security became
increasingly linked with the Jordan headwaters. These leaders of
diverse backgrounds (including Chaim Weizmann, a British chemist
whose wartime contribution of the gunpowder-refining process to
the Allies granted him a certain status among British decision
makers; Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestine-born agriculturalist who had
undertaken intelligence operations on Turkish troop movements for
the British; and Louis Brandeis, a US Supreme Court Justice) each
became demographer, cartographer, hydrologist, and strategist, in
preparation for the Peace Conference.

The guiding force in refining the thinking on the necessary
boundaries was Aaron Aaronsohn. He was in charge of an
agricultural experimental station at Atlit on the Mediterranean
coast, where his research focused on weather-resistant crops and
dry-farming techniques. Convinced that the modern agricultural
practices that would fuel Jewish immigration were incompatible
with "the slothful, brutish Ottoman regime" (Sachar
1979,103), he concluded that Zionist settlement objectives
required alliance with the incoming Allied Forces. Aaronsohn
initiated contact with the British to establish a Jewish spy
network in Palestine, which would report on Turkish positions and
troop movements. Perhaps because of his training both in
agriculture and in security matters, he became the first to
delineate boundary requirements specifically with regard to
future water needs. Aaronsohn's "The Boundaries of
Palestine" (27 January 1919, unpublished, Zionist Archives),
drafted in less than a day, argued that

In Palestine, like in any other country of arid and semi-arid
character, animal and plant life and, therefore, the whole
economic life directly depends on the available water supply. It
is, therefore, of vital importance not only to secure all water
resources already feeding the country, but also to insure the
possession of whatever can conserve and increase these water -
and eventually power - resources. The main water resources of
Palestine come from the North, from the two mighty
mountain-masses - the Lebanon range, and the Hermon ...

The boundary of Palestine in the North and in the North East
is thus dictated by the extension of the Hermon range and its
water basins. The only scientific and economic correct lines of
delineation are the water-sheds.

Aaronsohn then described the proposed boundaries in detail, as
delineated by the local watersheds. He acknowledged that, with
the exception of the Litani, the Lebanon range sends no important
water source towards Palestine and "cannot, therefore, be
claimed to be a 'Spring of Life' to the country." It is the
Hermon, he argued, that is "the real 'Father of Waters' and
cannot be severed from it without striking at the very root of
its economic life."

Returning to the Litani, however, Aaronsohn suggested that

[it] is of vital importance to northern Palestine both as a
supply of water and of power. Unfortunately its springs lie in
the Lebanon. Some kind of international agreement is essential in
order that the Litani may be fully utilised for the development
of North Palestine and the Lebanon.

Aaronsohn's rationale and boundary proposals were adopted by
the official Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference, led by
Chaim Weizmann. The "Boundaries" section of the
"Statement of the Zionist Organization Regarding
Palestine," which paraphrased Aaronson's proposals, read, in
part (see appendix II for the complete text):

The economic life of Palestine, like that of every other
semi-arid country depends on the available water supply. It is
therefore, of vital importance not only to secure all water
resources already feeding the country, but also to be able to
conserve and control them at their sources.

The Hermon is Palestine's real "Father of Waters"
and cannot be severed from it without striking at the very root
of its economic life ... Some international arrangement must be
made whereby the riparian rights of the people dwelling south of
the Litani River may be fully protected. Properly cared for these
head waters can be made to serve in the development of the
Lebanon as well as of Palestine. (Proposals dated 3 February
1919, Weizmann Letters 1968, appendix II)

Interestingly, Aaronsohn thought his ideas had been badly
mangled in the Proposals, perhaps because he was not included in
the final drafting. In an angry letter to Weizmann, he complained
that the draft was "a disgrace and a calamity" (emphasis
Aaronsohn's), and expressed shock that, for one of the delegates,
"a 'watershed' is the same as a 'thalweg.' Incredible, but
true" (unpublished fetter, 16 February 1919, Weizmann
Archives).

In June 1919 Aaronsohn died in a plane crash (at the time
deemed by the Zionists "mysterious") on his way to the
Peace Conference and the Zionist proposals were submitted without
revision. Nevertheless, the importance of the region's water
resources remained embedded in the thinking of the Zionist
establishment. "So far as the northern boundary is
concerned," wrote Chaim Weizmann later that year, "the
guiding consideration with us has been economic, and 'economic'
in this connection means 'water supply"' (18 September 1919,
Weizmann Letters, 1968).

Arab position

The Arab delegation to the Peace Conference was led by the
Emir Feisal, younger son of Emir Hussein of the Hejaz. Working
with T.E. Lawrence, Hussein and his sons had led Arab irregulars
against the Turks in Arabia and eastern Palestine. After the war,
Feisal had developed a relationship with Chaim Weizmann as both
prepared for the Peace Conference. After a meeting in 1918,
Feisal said in an interview

The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews,
understand one another, and I hope that as a result of
interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which will be
guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality, each
nation will make definite progress towards the realization of its
aspirations. (Cited in Esco Foundation 1947,139)

Feisal also initially expressed support for Jewish immigration
to Palestine, in part because he saw it as useful for his own
nationalist aspirations. At a banquet given in his honour by Lord
Rothschild in 1918, he pointed out that "no state could be
built up in the Near East without borrowing from the ideas,
knowledge and experience of Europe, and the Jews were the
intermediaries who could best translate European experience to
suit Arab life" (Esco Foundation 1947, 140).

In a meeting later that year, Feisal tried to enlist
Weizmann's support against French policies in Syria. Weizmann in
turn outlined Zionist aspirations and "asserted his respect
for Arab communal rights" (Sachar 1969, 385). The two also
agreed that all water and farm boundary questions should be
settled directly between the two parties.

Feisal and Weizmann formalized their understanding to support
each other's national ambitions on 3 January 1919, in a document
which expressed mutual friendship and recognition of the Balfour
Declaration, and stated that

All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and
stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale,
and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the
land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the
soil. In taking such measures the Arab peasant and tenant farmers
shall be protected in their rights, and shall be assisted in
forwarding their economic development. (Original reproduced in
Weizmann Letters, 1968)

These undertakings were (Feisal hand-wrote in the margin)
provided that Arab requests were granted. "If changes are
made," he wrote, "I cannot be answerable for failure to
carry out this agreement."

The Arab requests were spelled out in a memorandum dated 1
January 1919. Because the territory in question was so large
(including Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula),
geographically diverse and, for the most part well watered, it is
not surprising that water resources played little part in the
Arab deliberations. On the basis of a combination of level of
development and ethnic considerations, Feisal requested the
following (Esco Foundation, 1947):

That Syria, agriculturally and industrially advanced, and
considered politically developed, should be allowed to
manage her own affairs;

That Mesopotamia, "underdeveloped and thinly
inhabited by semi-nomadic peoples, would have to be
buttressed ... by a great foreign power," but
governed by Arabs chosen by the "selective rather
than the elective principle";

That the Hejaz and Arabian Peninsula, mainly a tribal
area suited to patriarchal conditions, should retain its
complete independence.

Two areas were specifically excluded: these were Lebanon,
"because the majority of the inhabitants were
Christian," and which had its own delegates, and Palestine
which, because of its "universal character was left to one
side for mutual consideration of all parties interested"
(Esco Foundation 1947,138).

Once testimony had been heard at Versailles, as the peace
talks continued, culminating at San Remo in 1920, the decisions
were left to the British and the French as to where the
boundaries between their mandates would be drawn.

The French supported the Lebanese claim that the
"historic and natural" boundaries of Greater Lebanon
should include the sources of the Jordan River (Sachar 1979,
117), including the Galilee region. They claimed that the Litani
was needed for development in Lebanon, whereas the snows of the
Hermon provided water for Damascus.

In 1919, the British first suggested the "Meinertzhagen
Line" as a boundary. This line, which was based chiefly on
British security requirements, was similar in the north to that
in the Zionist proposals, and was rejected by the French for
similar reasons. In September the British put forward the
compromise "Deauville Proposal," which granted
Palestine less territory than the Zionists sought but which still
included the southern bank of the Litani and the Banias
headwaters. At the time, Banias was thought (incorrectly) to be
the biblical Dan, thereby allowing the British to remain true to
their claim of Palestine "from Dan to Beersheba" (Hof
1985, 9) (see appendix I, map 11, for the area of dispute between
French and British claims). Finally, to meet French objections as
far as possible, the British proposed a border running north from
Acre to the Litani bend, then east to Mount Hermon, which would
increase Lebanese territory but leave the headwaters in Palestine
(Ra'anan 1955, 123).

Although the French rejected each of these proposals, Phillipe
Berthelot, the Foreign Minister and negotiator to an Anglo-French
conference on the Middle East in December 1919, suggested that,
although Prime Minister Clemenceau insisted on the Sykes-Picot
line, he was prepared

... to agree that one-third of the waterpower of the waters
flowing from Mount Hermon southwards into the Palestine of the
Sykes-Picot agreement should be allotted to the Zionists under an
economic arrangement with France. The French could do no more
than this. (Cited in Ra'anan 1955, 125)

At a meeting on 17 February 1920, the British, represented by
Prime Minister David Lloyd George, suggested that "all Jews
were unanimously agreed that the sources of Hermon and the
head-waters of Jordan were vital to the existence .. . of
Palestine" (Ra'anan 1955, 128). Without these headwaters,
Lloyd George argued, the Mandate for Palestine would be a
"heavy burden" for Britain. If France could not concede
the point, he argued, United States President Wilson might be
asked to arbitrate.

Berthelot responded that "the snows of Hermon dominated
the town of Damascus and could not be excluded from Syria, nor
could the waters of the Litani, which irrigated the most fertile
regions of Syria." But he did suggest that the claims to the
Jordan might be more admissible and that, while France could not
concede a frontier following the watersheds of the Syrian and
Palestinian rivers, "some arrangement might be made for the
joint use of the waters in question" (Ra'anan 1955, 129).

As to United States mediation, the French refused, claiming
that "President Wilson was entirely guided by Judge
Brandeis, who held very decided views." Brandeis had, in
fact, sent a telegram to the conference, endorsed by President
Wilson, which read in part, that "rational northern and
eastern boundaries are indispensable to a self-sustaining
community and economic development of the country. North
Palestine must include the Litani River watersheds, and the
Hermon on the east ... Less than this would produce mutilation of
the promised home" (unpublished telegram, 16 February 1920,
Zionist Archives).

Lloyd George and Berthelot finally fell back on "from Dan
to Beersheba," as described in an atlas written by Adam
Smith, a Scottish theological professor, where ancient Samaria
only brushes against the Litani, and has a boundary on the west
coast more southern even than the Sykes-Picot line (Hof 1985,
11).

In June 1920, France agreed to a compromise: Palestine's
northern boundary should be a line drawn from Ras en-Naqura to a
point on the Jordan just north of Metulla and Banias-Dan, and
then to the northern shore of Lake Hula, running from there along
the Jordan, down the middle of the Sea of Galilee to the Yarmuk,
where it would meet the Sykes-Picot line. Although these borders
included all existing Jewish settlements within Palestine, most
of the water resources would remain in Syria (Ra'anan 1955, 133).

At the San Remo Conference in April 1920, agreement was
reached where Great Britain was granted the mandates to Palestine
and Mesopotamia, and France received the mandate for Syria
(including Lebanon). During the remainder of the year,
last-minute appeals were made both by the British and by the
Zionists for the inclusion of the Litani in Palestine or, at the
least, for the right to divert a portion of the river into the
Jordan basin for hydropower. The French refused, offering a bleak
picture of the future without an agreement and suggested
(referring to British and Zionist ambiguity as to what was meant
by a "national home"), "Vous barbotterez si vous
le voulez, mais vous ne barbotterez pas à nos frais"
(Butler and Bury 1958, vol. VIII, p. 387).

On 4 December 1920, a final agreement was reached in principle
on the boundary issue, which addressed, mainly, French and
British rights to railways and oil pipelines, and incorporated
the French proposal for the northern boundaries of six months
earlier. The French delegation did promise that the Jewish
settlements would have free use of the waters of the Upper Jordan
and the Yarmuk, although they would remain in French hands
(Ra'anan 1955, 136). The Litani was excluded from this
arrangement. Article 8 of the Franco-British Convention,
therefore, included a call for a joint committee to examine the
irrigation and hydroelectric potential of the Upper Jordan and
Yarmuk "after the needs of the territories under French
Mandate," and added that

In connection with this examination the French government will
give its representatives the most liberal instructions for the
employment of the surplus of these waters for the benefit of
Palestine. (Cited in Hof 1985, 14)

The final boundaries between the French and British mandates,
which later became the borders between Israel, Lebanon, Syria,
and Jordan, were worked out by an Anglo-French commission set up
to trace the frontier on the spot. Their results were submitted
in February 1922 and signed by the British and French governments
in March 1923 (Ra'anan 1955; Hof 1985). The frontier would run
from Ras en-Naqura inland in an easterly direction along the
watershed between the rivers flowing into the Jordan and into the
Litani; the line was then to turn sharply north to include in
Palestine a "finger" of territory near Metulla and the
eastern sources of the Jordan.

Rather than include the Banias spring within Palestine, as in
the French proposal of six months earlier, the border ran
parallel to, and 100 m south of, the existing path from Metullah
to the Banias (see appendix I, map 12). The French insisted on
inclusion of this road in its entirety to facilitate east-west
transportation and communication within its mandate. This
northern border meant that the entire Litani and the Jordan
headwaters of the Ayoun and Hasbani would originate in Lebanon
before flowing into Palestine. The Banias spring, meanwhile,
would originate and flow for 100 m in Syrian territory, then into
Palestine. As Palestine had a promise of water use, and also
access to the Banias Heights, a small hill that over looked the
spring, the fact that the actual spring lay outside the
boundaries was not of immediate concern. Of the headwaters of the
Jordan, however, only the Dan spring remained entirely within
Palestine.

From Banias, the border turned south towards the Sea of
Galilee, along the foothills of the Golan Heights, parallel and
just east (sometimes within 50 m) of the Huleh Lake and the
Jordan River. Rather than passing through the middle of the Sea
of Galilee, the border ran just east of its shores (even if the
level were to rise because of a proposed dam), leaving the entire
lake, the town of El-Hama, and a small triangle just south of the
Jordan's outflow, within the territory of Palestine. These latter
two were already included in Zionist plans for water diversion
and hydroelectricity generation. These changes were beneficial to
Palestine's hydrostrategic positioning and, although they were
made mainly for administrative reasons, "to make customs
inspection easier," it was also expressed that the
development plans should proceed without international
complication (Ra'anan 1955,138,143). Nevertheless, according to
the agreement, fishing and navigation rights on the lake were
retained by the inhabitants of Syria.

At the Yarmuk, the border went eastward along the river,
meeting the Sykes-Picot line, into the Syrian desert and south of
the Jebel Druze.

The final agreement made no mention of joint access to
French-controlled waters.

Although the location of water resources had been an
important, sometimes overriding, issue with some of the actors
involved in determining the boundaries of these territories, it
is clear in the outcome that other issues took precedence over
the need for unified water basin development. These other factors
ranged from the geostrategic (the location of roads and oil
pipelines), to political alliances and relationships between
British, French, Jews, and Arabs, to how well versed one or
another negotiator was in biblical geography. The final
boundaries are the result of competing needs and abilities of
each of the people and entities involved in the negotiations.
Because of limited land and resources, no one political entity
could achieve all of its economic, historic, and strategic
requirements. hood. Because the boundaries had been drawn in a
way unfavourable to Palestine, they ensured a bitter conflict, by
making it impossible to arrive at a compromise solution on the
lines of a clear territorial separation between the two nations.
(Ra'anan 1955, 141)

The results sowed friction for generations. For Palestine, by
failing to approximate any natural geographic frontiers, the
borders left the country perennially exposed to armed invasion.
This heritage of economic and military vulnerability was to curse
the Palestine mandate, and later the entire Middle East, for
decades to come. (Sachar 1979, 117)